ISS space bio-experiment freezer to return on Discovery
Consumer pundits have long speculated that we would one day - perhaps even by now - have intelligent fridges which could be remotely controlled and monitored from afar using advanced communications links. But they couldn't realise that these fridges would become crammed with possibly-deadly organisms warped by extraterrestrial …
Oh I thought it was Friday for a second :(
... when talk with your tongue in your cheek like that :)
Of course, if any of the major newspapers wrote such an article, that would be scaremongering, wouldn't it?
"NASA Space Station Creates Mutant ... er ... blood and stuff" - Daily Mail
welcome our new Six Hundred Foot Invulnerable PMT Lady overlords!
They need a freezer? And they're in space, which is like a big cold vaccuum isn't it? Couldn't they have hung it outside the door?
Incidentally, who's on board the ISS at the mo? It's not Ben Grimm, Reid Richards, Sue & Jonny Storm is it?
Is there any hope in the bottom of the freezer?
I think you overstate matters with the sinister powers thing, that's just silly. Probably it will just release some kind of mutated bacteria that trigger the zombie apocalypse.
OK, why does this thing need to be satellite controlled from the ground? What the hell's wrong with a "super-freeze" switch on the front that one of the ISS crew just presses when asked?
Or am I just over-simplifying things here?
Space has no molecules, so in order to transfer heat you can only use radiation. To make something cold you need to remove energy from it to somewhere else. So a hot thing in space, e.g. the Sun, doe not instantly freeze. Lrn2science.
Look on the bright side, a zombie apocalypse will deal with obesity and overpopulation in a single go (the fat ones, being slower, will be more likely to be caught by the shuffling hordes).
...this will make the Bird flu (rememeber that) epidemic look like the common cold....
Actually a hot thing in space will radiate IR as Light until it ccols to background temp.. that is until it gets into sunlight where it will absorb IR light and get very hot...cycle for each orbit..
sci4u..
Loyd is correct about the temperature in space near earth as such. I can't find a source for a good figure near the earth, but cooling was a significant issue for Apollo 13. Substantial cooling will occur simply from radiation in space, so an area away from the heating support systems for any vehicle in space will cool substantially. What it this doesn't take into account is transport to and from the surface of the earth, and for that part of the journey both substantial insulation and cooling would be required. (Although I've never understood the desire to bring potentially deadly materials back to earth. Far better to study them in space where if something goes hideously wrong you can try to contain it, maybe even launch it into the sun.)
Oh, and the sun doesn't freeze because the gravitational energy of the sun keeps it in a plasma state in which nuclear fusion occurs, which also adds to the temperature of the sun.
Yeah, I was an astro major a long long time ago, although I eventually gave it up because arithmetic and I don't get along.
One last note, conduction via metal is the most efficient heat transfer mechanism. Which means that a box attached to an array of metal fins that radiate the heat away would actually be the fastest means to transfer heat away in space.
Would be a really lousy way of keeping it cold. You see, there's that big bright yellow thing called the sun that would cause the freezer's external temperatures to fluctuate wildly.
"Aliens live in our Earth's atmosphere"
For the first time in human history, I present here incontrovertible evidence of existence of tens of thousands of UFO in the Earth's atmosphere, which can be seen by any person in any part of the world at any time...
http://sites.google.com/site/socialcapital1/Home/aliens
Do you spuds not understand irony? You'd think that the Fantastic Four reference might have hinted at a lack of seriousness but apparently not.
And by the way, it's a double L, like the bank or the insurance company or the chemist or the gym or the Prime Minister or the composer, in fact like everything famous with the same name except Grossman who's a septic and thus doesn't count. *sigh*
Don't panic!
I've been working in secret on a 500 Megaton Evening Primrose Oil bomb!
"These drawings shows exactly 90% what people will see in the night sky"
Something blurred to a state where you can't tell what you are looking at?
"the big chill-down of the space freezer for loading into Discovery was a major event in its hometown of Birmingham"
Those long Winter evenings must just fly by.
...with this fridge of bio-death in tow lets damned well hope the shuttle doesn't do another one of those re-entry burn ups (OOOHHH too soon!?) and send the bio-matter flinging across a latitudinal line along south U S of A showering down on its unsuspecting inhabitants.
Or do we care? And would we be able to tell the difference if they do become infected with astro-zombification viruses?
Frickin southern redneck merkins. I saw that Top Gear special when they drove those cars across the deep south with 'Nascar Sucks' plastered all over one of their cars - they all ignant dawg.
I beg to differ, metal is not the optimum medium for heat transfer in regards to thermic transport properties, just the easiest to work with all things considered. granted, you can create a gradient to draw heat out with more reliable and constanr results, but over all speed and heat conductivity cannot be beaten by oil and polymers there of.
Maybe you mean metal is by far the most efficiant dissapator of heat? I think that was a very open comment, and probably not worth me thinking about it, but hey, it's wednesday, i'm bored.
all my love, other other Tom
Does that mean that that film is actually a documentary ?
No, it isn't. Yet.
However, feel free to give this topic a look in about 4 weeks or so, and see how many zombies are posting. Careful you don't log into Slashdot instead, it could be very confusing.
Tim#3
You obviously never served time in one of our fine higher education establishments. If you had you would have known how the contents of your average student house fridge can mutate, over time, into the most hideously deformed and unidentifiable biological waste of the lowest order.
Mines the one with my name stitched into the laundry label by my mum ..
